Sunday, June 19, 2016

This time it's Daniel Gross at Slate, noting a 25% decline in stations over a decade. He acknowledges the importance of extraneous forces like pricier real estate and fleet vehicles switching to natural gas, as well as future impacts from driverless vehicles. Gross also highlights electrical vehicles and plug-ins as a force, though. He doesn't quite get to the virtuous cycle argument - that as market share for electric increases, the market for gas stations suffers, gas stations disappear, gas vehicles become less convenient, and market share for electric increases even more. But he's heading in that direction.

Among the other tidbits Gross finds is Norway contemplating a ban on gas engine vehicle sales starting in 2025 (with Netherlands and even India saying something similar, but I find Norway more believable). EVs are 20% of current sales in Norway - when penetration reaches those levels, then these proposals don't seem outlandish. It's one way to accelerate the virtuous cycle of EVs replace ICEs.

6 comments:

The number of gas stations isn't nearly as important as the volumes they sell, vehicle fuel efficiency, and similar factors. According to the latest trends, technology, and prices, the world seems to be marching along an RCP4.5 pathway, without much fancy policy or pledges. I think the key will be to deploy nuclear power to reduce coal emissions.

A lot of gas stations built decades ago had soil contamination problems and often weren't worth fixing once they were shut down to remove the old leaking tanks, but the locations were attractive for other development.

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett, a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny who finally handed in the keys and retired from his wanna be research university. The students continue to be naive but great people and the administrators continue to vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional without Eli's help. Eli notices from recent political developments that this behavior is not limited to administrators. His colleagues retain their curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they, or at least some of them occasionally heeded his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.